Friday, January 07, 2005

American Morality. Liars, Murderers, and Torturers

America has come to a place and become a thing that most Americans once thought could not happen. But, the writing has been on the wall since shortly after the second World War. When even conservatives such as President Dwight Eisenhower, while leaving office, warned the American public to be wary of what he called the Industrial Military complex. Eisenhower neatly forgot to mention growing power that corporate lobbyists had in government.

The writing on the wall is written in flames now. Yet, most Americans seem unable or unwilling to read it or even admit its existence. As if things will be ok if we just close our eyes and stay the course. But then, with your eyes shut, you don't see when the course is inexorably leading to disaster of phenomenal proportions.

The American ship of state is headed for the rocks and nothing will save it now. With Fearless Leaders' blind hand at the wheel, the proverbial ship of state may even sink.
America is entering into a place so dark and chaotic that even these dark days will be remembered, with regret, as the end of the 'good old days'.

Those are terrible words and it gives me no pleasure to say them. It isn't a hope or a threat, it is an expression of the natural, historical outcome for despotic regimes that use torture, arbitrary mass detentions, and whole sale retaliatory punishments against civilians. Such as carried out by the Germans, who often destroyed entire villages and their occupants, as punishment for insurgent activity in the area. A serious war crime. Like Falluja.

Leaving aside the blatant intentional lies that Bush, Rumsfeld, and later Colin Powel, told to the United Nations and to world leaders. All to excuse inexcusable aggression against a country no longer capable of being a real danger to the United States. A country that had absolutely nothing to do with the events of 9/11. The original excuse for this so called war against terrorism.

Leaving aside the intolerable murder of over a hundred and fifty thousand, or more, Iraqi citizens. Civilians, mostly women, children, and the elderly. Most of whom were trying to hide from both the Americans and the insurgent fighters. Forget for just a moment, about the destruction of Falluja, where many more women and children were killed than insurgents. Let us briefly deal with the issue of torture.

Spear headed by Gonzales, Bush's' personal attorney, the White House has sought to get the President legal authority to use torture. A move that much of the defense department, minus Rumsfeld, and most of the top military brass strongly disapproved of. Knowing that it would have terrible consequences for American service personnel. Something that our "bring it on" Fearless Leader doesn't seem to mind. Since he doesn't realize his clackers are headed for the chopper, as well.

Gonzales pushed for and helped write a legal memo that redefined torture in a manner that is essentially meaningless. Under the new definition anything that does not kill the prisoner is not torture. If it does kill the prisoner, a prosecutor would have to prove the death was intentional to get a conviction. Imagine trying to prosecute such a charge.

"No sir, I did not intend to kill that man by hanging him upside down in a barrel of water while zapping his testicles with a fifty thousand volt stun gun. He must have had a bad heart. Not my fault. Nope, never intended to kill him, sir."

However Gonzales and Bush want to twist the rule of law to get what they want, the world has laws not subject to American veto. Torture is not only illegal in much of the world, it is looked upon as the lowest form of cruelty and perversion by much of the population of the planet. There will be a reckoning.

In the eyes of the world, America, it's soldiers, politicians, and even its citizens have become monsters. Your monstrousness grows daily.

There are high ranking officials in the present government that may end their days in prison. Possibly even George Bush himself. Cheney and Rumsfeld will likely die of natural causes before that comes to pass. But Gonzales is a relatively young man who may still be around for that day of reckoning. We can only hope. Once again, this is not a threat but a picture of where we are likely headed.

America will become a room in hell before this happens. When it becomes apparent that they are doomed to failure and redress, this government and their neocon allies will use the Patriot Act and their new detention powers and their new interpretation of torture, on American citizens, in a big way.

Can't happen here? If you still believe it can't happen here, you have not been paying attention to what is going on in America. Lots of things are happening in America, right now, that I and most Americans did not believe could happen, in America. But here it is.

Under the Patriot act, any citizen can be arrested and be incarcerated for an indefinite period of time, with out charges being laid. Persons arrested under the Patriot act have no access to lawyers or anyone else who can help them. Who will ever know what happens in those secret incarcerations. Beatings, electro shock torture, rape and sexual tortures and simulated drowning are all being carried out by CIA and military intelligence 'interrogators'. Professional torturers in common language. People whom I hope will end their days in prison.

We are in for a time of hell but this regime will fall and it will fall hard.

A note to those MPs and other soldiers whose smiling faces appeared, grinning, while abusing those people. You are marked. When this government collapses, you better be prepared to run and hide because every one of you is going to be on an international fugitive list. You will only be small cards in the deck but you are the ones easiest to get. Your trials will be test cases for the trials of the big fish. The time very well may come when you will once more face your victims, but then, it will be in a court of law. Something Fearless Leader and his cronies don't believe in. But, it is waiting for them.

An up date: A very good video report re Gonzalez and his role and the white house role in creating the new definition of torture. Please note that his most determined questioner was was a conservative Republican Senator. The Gonzalez Evasion tape.

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The foundation for a fascist regime is taking form before congress this week. The Republicans control, the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court. Who can stop these Republican traitors during the next two years as they press down their agenda and carry it forward in an aggressive, mutilating style of whom the Republicans are well renowned.

Yesterday, we witnessed a very timid Democratic Senate voice concern towards voter disenfranchisement in Ohio State. If the current 'anemic' Democratic Party and their elected 'panty-waste' officials are the lot that we are to trust to protect us from an administration hell-bent on destroying American democracy, than we are all in grave danger of repeating 1939-45. God forbid, it may indeed be far worse.

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About Me

Raised from age three in small town and semi rural areas of Alabama, I am something of a converted redneck. A 'leftneck' as a Virginia friend calls himself. Being a product of one of the lowest appendages of American culture and sink holes of the economy, I represented class A cannon fodder during the Vietnam war.
I ended my Air Force enlistment, without permission, in 1969. I have lived in Canada since 1970.
The horrible din made by the destruction of American democracy, inspires and prods me to write about what I see from my expatriate view of America.